JOHN FASHANU, the former England football star, claims he has
solved a £3.7 billion debt trading fraud perpetrated by members
of Nigeria's former ruling elite.

Fashanu, 37, a millionaire businessman and Nigeria's official
sports ambassador, has extensive business interests in the west
African country and says he has been investigating the fraud
for the past three years.

The oil-rich state was systematically looted by the previous
regime, the family of the late dictator General Sani Abacha and
the previous president, General Ibrahim Babangida.

International financiers and bankers knew that billions of
pounds disappeared from the Nigerian central bank in the late
1980s and early 1990s. It was suspected that senior figures had
hidden the cash in overseas accounts.

The precise mechanics of how the money was funnelled overseas
remained murky. If Fashanu's claims are correct, however, the
incident was one of the largest banking frauds in history -
exceeded only by the 1991 collapse of the Bank of Credit and
Commerce.

"I and one other person have personally financed this
investigation," claimed the sportsman. "I consider it a duty.
Nigeria's reputation reflects badly on all of us and it is time
it was cleaned up. As a Nigerian [holding dual citizenship], I
want this to be sorted out."

Fashanu may be influenced by more than national pride. He has
made no secret of his political ambitions and has been mooted
as a future sports minister in Nigeria, where he spends six
months a year. His African business interests range from a
duty-free centre to acting as an agent for Nigerian football
players, including Arsenal's Kanu.

The Football Association initially opposed Fashanu's
application for a Fifa agent's licence because of his
involvement in the 1998 match-fixing trial, in which he was
acquitted.

Fashanu says he met the Nigerian high commissioner in London,
Prince Bola Ajibola, last week and gave him a dossier which has
already led to the freezing of five bank accounts holding £125m
in Switzerland and Austria.

"There are a lot of prominent names among the beneficiaries,"
Fashanu said yesterday.

The fraud centred on a Nigerian debt buy-back scheme run by the
Central Bank of Nigeria between 1988 and 1993, he said.
Hundreds of millions of pounds were diverted into foreign
accounts.

Fashanu said he first came across the fraud three years ago
when he was doing background checks on some Nigerian potential
business partners. "A lot of information began to come out," he
said. "I was even called anonymously and offered £500,000 if I
stopped making my inquiries."

He decided to press on, hiring investigators who gradually
pieced together the story. "It got bigger and bigger," said
Fashanu, "until we were looking at a fraud of at least $6
billion [£3.75 billion], involving 200 separate bank accounts.
I have all the data and information on the people who have
stolen this money."

A Nigerian central bank report has already established that up
to £7.75 billion of government payments made between 1988 and
1993 are not accounted for. The sum was part of the windfall
from higher oil prices after the Gulf war.

Some of this had been earmarked for currency stabilisation and
debt buy-back, but these schemes cost only £1.5 billion and
there are no records of other payments during the period.

Nigeria's decision to buy back its debt in 1988 was kept secret
because it was technically illegal. With official government
backing, two Americans with close links to Babangida were
brought in to set up front companies and offshore companies.

Jeffrey Schmidt and Robert Minton used a London-based company,
Growth Management, to buy back the debt with funds from Nigeria
channelled through a leading Austrian bank, Osterreichische
Landesbank.

Further companies set up in America helped to disguise the
origin of the funds. Money was later routed through banks in
New York and Basle to buy back the debts.

Big lenders to Nigeria, including Barclays Bank, had thought
they had little chance of seeing their debts repaid and were
glad to take advantage of the scheme. Barclays sold almost
£190m of debts to the Austrian bank in 1991.

However, much of the money made available for the buy-back
scheme ended up being diverted by others into Swiss and
Austrian bank accounts.

Minton told the newsletter Africa Confidential this week that
he had made money - but not the sums that were now being
mentioned. "We made tens of millions of dollars, not hundreds
of millions and certainly not billions," he said.

Minton added: "If any money was stolen, it must have been from
transactions which were outside our control."

Stefan Pinter of Growth Management said: "It was one of the
most effective buy-backs I've seen and of great benefit to
Nigeria."

Fashanu says he has been warned off the investigation several
times and received two anonymous threatening phone calls last
week. President Olusegu Obasanjo's democratically elected
government, which replaced the military dictatorship last year,
has pledged to crack down on the fraud and corruption which has
given Nigerian business an appalling reputation throughout the
world. Obasanjo himself is a former chairman of the advisory
committee of Transparency International, an independent
monitoring organisation based in Berlin.